Rachel’s children, Amelia & James
Trying to capture the past fourteen years in a single story is no easy task. This account is scattered, much like our story — and that’s kind of the point. My motivation for writing is that, hopefully, the benefits to others outweigh the discomfort of sharing. I would’ve welcomed more honest communication in the early days. I tried to find refuge in online communities but often found them either ranty, judgy, or overly sentimental.
My husband and I adopted our two children in 2012: James, aged four, and his half-sister Amelia, aged two. They spent a couple of months in a lovely foster home after being removed from a damaging family environment. I’m mindful not to create a narrative that isn’t mine to tell, but neglect, abuse, abandonment, and chaos, at any level, can shape development during the most crucial early years. Adoption was something I felt driven to do from a young age. I believed we were exceptionally prepared to become adoptive parents — me, a teacher, and he, a paediatrician. We read diligently, attended preparation training, completed reflection logs with care, and talked endlessly about parenting plans. We did everything “properly”.
A most surreal and wonderful memory is arriving at the foster home for the first time and seeing two children, whom we had only known through photographs, come running towards us, shouting, “Mummy… Daddy!” Then a week later James and Amelia moved in, and our lives began as a family of four. Most of what we had built at the level of thought didn’t survive our lived experience: eight-hour tantrums, rejection, aggression, extreme dysregulation. I told myself it was normal and expected behaviour. ‘We can handle it. It will pass. Just stay consistent with love and boundaries, and follow the advice given’.
I enrolled on courses, gathered frameworks, refined plans. It worked at work… why didn’t it work at home? It felt like every course I attended placed the emphasis back on us to be both parents and therapists. But we cracked on and muddled through those early years discovering much joy along the way.
I’m impatient and goal-focused by nature. I can see on reflection my agenda did little to improve outcomes. Developmental milestones and progress can be unconventional and haphazard at the best of times, but even more so for adopted children. Something that seems “sorted” can unravel; something that feels permanently stuck can shift without warning. Often the work is simply to stay present.
I have been the target of much of our son’s aggression and rejection. It makes sense psychologically: I am mum, and he was abandoned by his birth mother. However, being on the receiving end for years takes its toll. I’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to grow rhino hide. Intuition tells me his anger was masking a deeper emotional need, and I have had to trust that beyond the aggression lies connection and healing. That has been the single most important factor in our relationship.
I’m beginning to see how much of the emotional energy I put into “fixing” situations would have been better channelled towards acceptance — and towards a willingness to be changed by what was happening, rather than trying to master it. Little wins come in sporadic, unexpected moments.
Adoption invites a particular kind of questioning: Is this attachment? Trauma? Personality? Nature or nurture? Transference, loyalty conflicts, grief, identity? And so on. The analysis can become endless — and it isn’t always helpful. In biological families, bonding is often assumed to be instinctive. Sometimes it is sometimes it isn’t. Still, I’ve found myself envying friends whose relationships with their biological children seem to unfold effortlessly.
We chose to adopt, but whatever hopes we carried into it, our children entered adoption through loss and did not have a choice. James and Amelia have always been fiercely independent. I admire it, but it’s also wildly unnerving. Independence can be a form of armour. When control has been taken from you early on, self-reliance is basic survival. In James, this need for control manifested as increasingly violent outbursts and a refusal to accept support from anyone. Addiction, self-harm and suicidal ideation left me with a desperate need to rescue that could not be met.
Things declined dramatically from 2021. James’s behaviour at home and school became unmanageable. He ran away from home on several occasions and was picked up by the police. He was only twelve at the time but was presenting as a much older child.
This primal need for independence was cemented in James very early on. We were told by his social worker that James was toilet-trained and able to dress himself before the age of two. He was also living with a neighbour at that time. He simply does not know any other way to exist. As a parent, however, it conflicted with my instinct to love and nurture. My attempts served only to drive a deeper wedge between us.
He spent as much time as possible at friends’ houses and refused to bring friends home. Repeated comments from parents: “Oh, he’s such a polite and kind boy — he’s welcome any time,” were very hard to hear because at home he was often verbally and physically abusive to me and his sister.
At thirteen, James got into a relationship with a girl from school and they spent every possible moment together. He became obsessed with his phone and any attempts to restrict caused violent outbursts. He painted a picture to her parents of us as abusive and asked her family if he could move in with them. James’s relationship with his girlfriend became all-consuming and controlling. They stopped attending school and withdrew from others.
During this time, social services were supporting me and Amelia, as James’s aggression was increasing at home and amongst his peers. I remember feeling completely lost and hopeless. I simply did not know how to support James and keep Amelia safe.
Amelia was going through her own struggles. She was on the receiving end of persistent bullying at school, and at home from her brother. In their early years, Amelia and James had an impenetrable bond; this rejection hit her hard. She became isolated, dissociated, and stopped caring for herself.
As we grappled for all support available; the children and I experienced therapeutic overload. It all got very heavy and intense, but we followed advice and stuck with it. Therapeutic life story work was a huge unravelling for them. Amelia discovered she had 23 siblings — two of whom were older than me and her dad. She called her family tree “Spaghetti Junction”! James had a similar picture, but with many unknowns due to limited information on his biological father. There were real benefits to the work, but it also further blew their little minds to pieces.
In January 2023 we took the children on a trip to New Zealand and Australia. This was not the reconnecting experience we had hoped for. James reached his lowest point and was taken to hospital several times due to extreme emotional dysregulation. With the usual distractions removed, we could see the full extent of his pain. Psychiatric services were excellent in New Zealand, and although the trip was extremely difficult, we returned with clarity.
This was the point when I leaned into the support of my family. My sister and her husband offered for James to live with them for his final two years at school. This was a huge leap of faith for us all. By that stage, he was unsafe to be at home. I was concerned he might pose a risk to his little cousins and my mum, who were also living there but we all felt driven to do everything we could to keep James in the family and stop him returning to the care system. Over the following two years I split myself between the two households and supported both children as best I could.
The move was a lifeline for James and being 200 miles away from home allowed space for some healing. His little cousins worshipped their big cousin which helped him to soften in their presence. My brother-in-law is from a Ghanaian family where this kind of intergenerational living is standard. Trying to carry everything within a small nuclear family can ask too much of too few people. Raising children in networks doesn’t remove the specific challenges of adoption, but it can reframe the pressure and shame that grows in isolation.
For me, a feeling of “failure” hovered constantly. Letting go of what family life “should” look like has been part of survival: releasing the fantasy that a household must always operate as a coherent unit and instead building a community of support. I am growing in trust that the right people can come into our lives at the right time — and that a power far greater than me is in control.
The persistent bullying Amelia endured from Year 1 is a painful recollection — and a reminder that so much remains outside parental or school control. She received a diagnosis of autism in Year 7 which has helped her a great deal. She has embraced her neurodivergence, and it’s enabled her to find her tribe and grow in self-acceptance. In many ways, her blunt sincerity and steady love have been an anchor for us all.
The past fourteen years have broken each of us apart in different ways. I didn’t imagine adoption would be easy. I also didn’t imagine it would feel impossible, as often as it has. There were long stretches when I lived in a state of constant high alert: anticipating, scanning for the next mood, pulled into an emotional storm. I often wondered how a child could orchestrate my neurochemistry so completely.
For James and Amelia, their strength of character and fierce resilience are an inspiration. They have had the courage to confront generational patterns and trauma. James is now 17 and living semi-independently under the care of social services. Whilst I hope he will choose to return home this set up is right for him at this time. We communicate most days, and we see each other often. He tells me ‘everything!’ A bit too much, if I’m honest. But he’s finally trusting me to be his mum and friend, and our relationship is the best it’s ever been. Amelia and James have resumed their hilarious double act and are thick as thieves again. We are also a formidable team of three.
Far from being a story of heroic self-sufficiency, we have relied on community — and continue to do so. There have been many bumps in the path, but every moment offers the chance to start again. It’s a privilege to be given this role, and I could not be prouder of the young adults James and Amelia are becoming. It has been an adventure so far, and I imagine there are many more to come.
For anyone embarking on the challenge of adoption, I urge you to do so with your eyes open and with as few expectations as possible. In hindsight, I believe wholeheartedly that early therapeutic intervention for the children should’ve been a given. Their little brains had been disrupted at the most crucial stages of development.